Count your blessings: Real reason for Thanksgiving
The day we Americans refer to as Thanksgiving Day is upon us. Of course, on this day school students take a break for a few of days. Plants and government offices also have a day or two off. Grocery stores have big promotions during the week in an effort to lure customers into buy the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner.
Lots of people think about the big football games that are always the highlight of their Thanksgiving afternoon and evening. Or hunting traps might be what on the agenda.
In most instances the real purpose for having the holiday is seldom discussed. I wonder sometimes if we as Americans have lost touch of the true meaning of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is an annual holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It originated in three days of prayer and feasting celebrated by the Plymouth colonists in 1621, although an earlier thanksgiving was offered in prayer alone by members of the Berkeley plantation near present day Charles City, Va., on Dec. 4, 1619.
The first national Thanksgiving Day, proclaimed by President George Washington, was celebrated on Nov. 26, 1789. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving an annual holiday to be commemorated on the last Thursday in November. For three years (1939-41) under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the day was celebrated on the third Thursday in November, but it was returned to the traditional date by Congress in 1941.
In Canada, Thanksgiving, first observed in November 1879, is a legal holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October.
When one considers what our forefathers went though during it first year in the “new world,” we might wonder what these people had that they were thankful. We know at least half of those who arrived on the shores of this land died during the first winter.
This doesn’t sound much like something for which to be thankful.
But the crops they raised the next spring and summer brought new hope. This is the reason for their thanksgiving celebration. In comparison, most of us have much more then probably all of the pilgrims put together. But are we thankful? The majority of us aren’t. In most instances, many most never even think about being thankful even on Thanksgiving Day. We are to absorbed in thinking about what we don’t have.
Few, if any, of us would want to move time back more than 300 years and live like the pilgrims lived? even though there are those who choose to live that way. But too many of us are thankful that we don’t have to live as they lived.
Psalms 50:14 Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:
Psalms 69:30 I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving.
Psalms 75:1 Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks: for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.
Psalms 79:13 So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever: we will shew forth thy praise to all generations.
Psalms 92:1 It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High: Let us give thanks unto the Lord!